Hunting a false alarm for 6 hours, culprit was a $3 relay

Last Tuesday I get a call from a warehouse client in Toledo, their panel is going off at random times, no pattern at all. I show up, check all the zones, sensors test fine, voltage looks good. I swapped the backup battery just to rule that out, then rechecked every wire on the expansion board. Six hours in, I'm about to blame the panel itself, but then I notice the relay for the strobe light was stuck half open, sending stray voltage back through the zone loop. Total fix was a $3 relay from my van, but I lost a whole day over it. Has anyone else had a weird intermittent issue that turned out to be something dumb like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia74820d ago

Man that is brutal. 6 hours for a $3 part is the kinda thing that makes you want to throw the whole van in a lake. At least you found it though, the ones that stay a mystery are way worse.

lauras8320d ago

Remember doing the same thing with a dryer that wouldn't start, spent a whole Saturday chasing wires only to find it was a bad $2 thermal fuse. You're right, at least you know it's fixed, but man does that ever sting.